The island has been devastated. The entire electrical grid was wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of people have nothing left but the clothes they’re wearing. They have no jobs to go to, since entire areas were wiped out: businesses, residences, buildings, name it.

I heard on PR talk radio that now Puerto Ricans are leaving at a rate of 3,000 per day; essentially, as fast as the commercial airlines can carry them. The lines at the airport are so long that the airlines are asking passengers to arrive at least six hours ahead of time.

Most will initially stay with relatives.

And understandably so.

Imagine, if you may, that your savings were depleted from emergency expenditures from Hurricane Irma. Then Hurricane Maria strikes, totaling your car and your house with everything in it. Your cash is gone by now, and then you find out that your job is gone, too. Your relative(s) in Orlando offer to pay for your one-way plane ticket, so you can have a place to stay with running water, electricity and food (which are lacking in Puerto Rico, and you have no money and no job), until you find work. They will buy you clothes so you can go job hunting.

You accept their offer, and have your relative(s) apply on line for jobs so you can at least start on the job hunt.

You arrive with a small wheelie containing all you own. You are an American citizen and are acting entirely within the law.

On September 26 I estimated that at least a million Puerto Ricans are coming to the 50 States in the next six months. The rate so far is 3,000/day; for my estimate to be correct, it’d need to double.

Now here’s the problem for the Republicans: How are you reaching out to this newly-arrived demographic of voters, unprecedented in size and circumstances, coming from an area so imbued in the Democrat machinery that the pro-statehood Governor was a DNC delegate for Hillary in 2008 and for Obama in 2012?

Long-time friend of this blog John Clement writes (emphasis added)

I do not think the Republicans understand the significance of Maria. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced the Puerto Ricans are welcome in Chicago. He wants more voters. The Puerto Ricans can turn some Red states to Blue.

This is not the first time a weather event changed the political scene. In 1927 there was a bad flood on the Mississippi River in Mississippi. This was the first time the federal government tried to do disaster relief. Up to that time the Red Cross and local sources did it.

Calvin Coolidge appointed Herbert Hoover to head up the relief effort. The blacks were trapped on top of the levees. The plantations owners convinced Hoover to leave them there. They were afraid the blacks would run off. They left anyway. That is when Chicago and other urban areas received an influx of them.

Up to that point the blacks had voted Republicans because Lincoln had freed them. The blacks blamed the Republicans and switched to voting for the Democrats.

Puerto Ricans can turn Florida blue. How about the rest of the country?

As mentioned earlier, Puerto Ricans are not only moving to Florida. They’re also moving to Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Connecticut.